Sep. 10th, 2022

jazzy_dave: (books n tea)
Peter Frankopan "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World" Bloomsbury Publishing)





This is an interesting encouragement to look more eastern-wards for a greater appreciation of what happened during history. During my degree, many years ago, I did study alongside The Renaissance and Reformation periods, the Enlightenment, and Classical Civilization and often wondered why we only studied Roman and Greek History and not Persian, Indian, Chinese, and Egyptian history during the course, and I commented during my History lectures on the Crusades that it was more about money and trade than religion, which got laughs from my fellow students and correction from the lecturer on their assumptions (I felt very vindicated). So, this is a book for people who don't seem to think that there is anything that has come out of the middle east except terrorists, but unfortunately people who believe these things don't tend to believe that this is a book for them.

This is a book that looks at how influential parts of the world dismissed by people were on actual history, not only of their own countries but on the world, and how ignoring those influences is toxic, a reductio ad absurdum of reality.

Although the "Silk Roads" of the title is intended as a metaphor, expressing the east-west/west-east movement of beliefs and ideals as well as the exchange of goods, the metaphor itself pushes Frankopan unerringly toward finding his explanations in economic factors. In the case of, say, World War I, this produces a shrewd counter-narrative to the traditional British account of brave and sacrificial soldiers resisting German aggression ("inspired," in Winston Churchill's words, "not only by the love of country but by a widespread conviction that human freedom was challenged by military and Imperial tyranny"). Frankopan instead centers his admirably succinct (13 pages!) account of the Great War around the establishment of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and the Ottoman threat to the shipping traffic in the Suez Canal. These commercial interests become the core of the matter, the stacked tinder just waiting for the match; Gavrilo Princip's bullets are almost incidental. It's a somewhat reductionist version, yes, but one-volume world histories have to reduce somewhere, and Frankopan's oil-centered analysis allows him to point directly (and accurately) forward from 1914-1918 to the present: the "control of Persia's crown jewels [by] foreign investors led to a deep and festering hatred of the outside world, which in turn led to nationalism and, ultimately, to a more profound suspicion and rejection of the west best epitomized in modern Islamic fundamentalism."


Yes, we need a more holistic view of history, but it's a hard task for anyone, history will always be filtered by experience, knowledge, access to information, and upbringing, bias can be acknowledged but will always creep in, the trick is to understand that it will always be there.



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jazzy_dave: (bookish)
Daphne Du Maurier "The House On The Strand" (Virago Modern Classics)








Set in the atmospheric landscape of Cornwall, "The House on the Strand" concerns a young man's experiments with hallucinogenic drugs and resulting "time travel" back to mysterious characters and events in the 14th century. Set in the 1960s, our protagonist, Dick Young, becomes increasingly drawn (perhaps "addicted" might be more accurate) to the past, which he finds far more interesting than his current life with his wife Vita and young stepsons.

Daphne du Maurier, a skilled hand at suspense, has crafted a compelling story with keen psychological insights. The characters are well-developed, particularly Dick and Vita, whose banter and interactions realistically reflect martial tension and conflict. I will confess that I generally found the chapters concerning the 14th-century events quite baffling in their complexity, and the numerous similar-sounding characters and place names equally exasperating. Consequently, I merely skimmed those sections; but Dick's subsequent recaps in the present day adequately summarize all the reader needs to know. The open-ended surprise twist perfectly caps the tale.


In fact, as it uses the tropes of science fiction and time travel, this has to be my favourite novel by hers

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